Mailing List:

Usage

FMDatabase - Represents a single SQLite database. Used for executing SQL statements.

FMResultSet - Represents the results of executing a query on an FMDatabase.

Database Creation

An FMDatabase is created with a path to a SQLite database file. This path can be one of these three:

A file system path. The file does not have to exist on disk. If it does not exist, it is created for you.

An empty string (@""). An empty database is created at a temporary location. This database is deleted with the FMDatabase connection is closed.

NULL. An in-memory database is created. This database will be destroyed with the FMDatabase connection is closed.

FMDatabase *db = [FMDatabase databaseWithPath:@"/tmp/tmp.db"];

Opening

Before you can interact with the database, it must be opened. Opening fails if there are insufficient resources or permissions to open and/or create the database.

if (![db open]) {
[db release];
return;
}

Executing Updates

Any sort of SQL statement which is not a SELECT statement qualifies as an update. This includes CREATE, PRAGMA, UPDATE, INSERT, ALTER, COMMIT, BEGIN, DETACH, DELETE, DROP, END, EXPLAIN, VACUUM, and REPLACE statements (plus many more). Basically, if your SQL statement does not begin with SELECT, it is an update statement.

Executing updates returns a single value, a BOOL. A return value of YES means the update was successfully executed, and a return value of NO means that some error was encountered. If you use the -[FMDatabase executeUpdate:error:withArgumentsInArray:orVAList:] method to execute an update, you may supply an NSError ** that will be filled in if execution fails. Otherwise you may invoke the -lastErrorMessage and -lastErrorCode methods to retrieve more information.

Executing Queries

A SELECT statement is a query and is executed via one of the -executeQuery... methods.

Executing queries returns an FMResultSet object if successful, and nil upon failure. Like executing updates, there is a variant that accepts an NSError ** parameter. Otherwise you should use the -lastErrorMessage and -lastErrorCode methods to determine why a query failed.

In order to iterate through the results of your query, you use a while() loop. You also need to "step" from one record to the other. With FMDB, the easiest way to do that is like this:

FMResultSet has many methods to retrieve data in an appropriate format:

intForColumn:

longForColumn:

longLongIntForColumn:

boolForColumn:

doubleForColumn:

stringForColumn:

dateForColumn:

dataForColumn:

dataNoCopyForColumn:

UTF8StringForColumnIndex:

objectForColumn:

Each of these methods also has a {type}ForColumnIndex: variant that is used to retrieve the data based on the position of the column in the results, as opposed to the column's name.

Typically, there's no need to -close an FMResultSet yourself, since that happens when either the result set is deallocated, or the parent database is closed.

Closing

When you have finished executing queries and updates on the database, you should -close the FMDatabase connection so that SQLite will relinquish any resources it has acquired during the course of its operation.

[db close];

Transactions

FMDatabase can begin and commit a transaction by invoking one of the appropriate methods or executing a begin/end transaction statement.

Data Sanitization

When providing a SQL statement to FMDB, you should not attempt to "sanitize" any values before insertion. Instead, you should use the standard SQLite binding syntax:

INSERT INTO myTable VALUES (?, ?, ?)

The ? character is recognized by SQLite as a placeholder for a value to be inserted. The execution methods all accept a variable number of arguments (or a representation of those arguments, such as an NSArray or a va_list), which are properly escaped for you.

Alternatively, you can use the -execute*WithFormat: variant to use NSString-style substitution:

[db executeUpdateWithFormat:@"INSERT INTO myTable VALUES (%d)", 42];

Internally, the -execute*WithFormat: methods are properly boxing things for you. The following percent modifiers are recognized: %@, %c, %s, %d, %D, %i, %u, %U, %hi, %hu, %qi, %qu, %f, %g, %ld, %lu, %lld, and %llu. Using a modifier other than those will have unpredictable results. If, for some reason, you need the % character to appear in your SQL statement, you should use %%.

History

The history and changes are availbe on its GitHub page and are summarized in the "CHANGES_AND_TODO_LIST.txt" file.

Contributors

The contributors to FMDB are contained in the "Contributors.txt" file.